🌲South Carolina Fire Dashboard🔥

Overview

The South Carolina Fire Dashboard is a real-time dashboard that monitors fire activity across South Carolina using NASA FIRMS data. It visualizes active fire locations, intensity (FRP), and other key details on an interactive map.

🚀 Live Demo: South Carolina Fire Dashboard

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🔧 Technologies Used

Frontend:

• React.js – For building the interactive UI.
• React-Leaflet (Leaflet) – React map components powered by Leaflet.
• OpenStreetMap tiles – Base map layer provider.
• Axios – For making API requests.

Backend:

• Node.js & Express.js – For handling API requests.
• NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) provides satellite-based fire detection data from multiple Earth-observing satellites.
  • Currently ingests VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) data from Suomi NPP (S-NPP) and NOAA-20 satellites.
  • Each detection includes lat/long, brightness, UTC date/time, satellite & instrument, confidence, FRP, and day/night.
  • Data is spatially filtered to South Carolina, de-duplicated as needed, and kept in a rolling 48-hour window in Postgres (older rows are pruned automatically).

Database & Hosting:

• Supabase (PostgreSQL) – Stores fire data, serves it via an API, and automatically prunes rows older than ~72 hours (keeping the latest 48 hours visible with a buffer).
• Vercel – Hosts both the backend (API) and frontend, with a daily cron job to fetch new data.

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🌟 Features

• 🛰️ NASA FIRMS integration – Fetches satellite-detected fire data.
• 🔥 Live fire monitoring – Displays active fires in South Carolina.
• 🗺️ Interactive Map – Shows fire locations, intensity, and details.
• 📊 Quick Stats sidebar – Shows active fire counts.
• 🌓 Light/Dark mode – Accessible, high-contrast palette.
• 📱 Adaptive layout – Responsive grid; sidebar auto-sizes.
• ⚡ Deployed on Vercel – Ensures fast loading times and seamless updates.
• 🔄 Daily refresh - Vercel Cron fetches new detections once per day and prunes old rows.

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🛠️ Getting Started

1️⃣ Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/jillmpla/south_carolina_fires.git
cd south_carolina_fires

2️⃣ Install Dependencies

For the backend:

cd backend
npm install

For the frontend:

cd ../frontend
npm install

3️⃣ Set Up Environment Variables

Create a .env file inside the backend directory and add:

NASA_API_KEY=your_nasa_firms_api_key
DATABASE_URL=your_supabase_postgres_url
CRON_SECRET=your_long_random_secret

Create a .env file inside the frontend directory and add:

REACT_APP_API_URL=your_backend_deployment_url

4️⃣ Run Locally

Start the backend:

cd backend
node server.js

Start the frontend:

cd ../frontend
npm start

📡 API Usage

The backend API serves fire data at:

GET /api/fires?hours=48&limit=500

Example response:

{
  "fires": [
    {
      "id": 26,
      "latitude": 32.75765,
      "longitude": -80.70053,
      "brightness": 329.96,
      "confidence": "n",
      "acq_date": "2025-09-12",       
      "acq_time": "1834",             
      "satellite": "N",
      "frp": 2.66,
      "daynight": "N",                
      "acq_ts": "2025-09-12T18:34:00.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "count": 1,
  "meta": {
    "mode": "latest-available",
    "start_utc": "2025-09-10T18:56:00.000Z",
    "end_utc": "2025-09-12T18:56:00.000Z",
    "lookback_hours": 48
  }
}	

To manually fetch and update fire data:

GET /api/update-fires?key=your_long_random_secret

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the License file for details.

If you find this project useful, consider giving it a star! ⭐